Camping and golfing

Tuesday the 12th
Camping was all right, came back yesterday late afternoon and instantly threw the poison oak-covered dog in the bath. I hit the cold shower right after, to get any urushiol oil off of me, that’s scientist talk for poison oak oil. Cold water keeps the pores closed and you less oil gets into your pores that way.

The poison oak is really lush this year, with all the rain, and the paths are covered over in a lot of places, so we no doubt contacted the nasty stuff and had our faith in the Lord tested a little. Woody loves Plaskett Creek campground, and all his buddies in the raccoon gang there, and he parties with them all night. I wouldn’t let Woody sleep in the tent, because he already had gone in the bush and had the dreaded PO on him, so he guarded the perimeter instead, and that is a big job, since the ‘coons are plentiful and aggressive. They could kick his little 20-lb. butt too, but he is quick and willing, so he parties away with them, running through all the poison oak. He looked so tired in the morning.

We got up to the campground about 2:00 Sunday, set up camp, played some bocce, drank some beer. One of the guys brought some very good home brew, and we had some of that. Around 5:00 we all decided to take a hike down into Jade Cove and look for jade, since it was low tide, so away we went. I wasn’t too sure about this venture – it was hiking up from Jade Cove that first made me think there was something really wrong with me, back on January 15. It’s about ½ mile downhill to the cliff from the campground, then a somewhat slippery descent of 300’. This used to take about 3-5 minutes, one shot - no stopping. I let everyone go ahead and took my time.

About 1/3rd of the way down my thighs were spent and my pulse was at 125. I sat down and reconsidered, thinking more about the return uphill trip. Of course the other dudes were already down there, and what would they think if I didn’t show, that I was hurt or stuck? Would they come looking for me? Woody had gone ahead with Beauchemin, but he came back for me, so I continued down, took another couple of breaks and made it no problem. I hung around in the cove for an hour, then I started back out ahead of the rest, took a couple of breaks on the way up, and made it without any problems.

I was spent, though, and couldn’t last long enough to get a poker game going. Back at camp we had a feast of sausages and steak, more beer, guacamole and chips, brownies. I hit the tent at 10pm, and woke up at 6 am. Beauch was making coffee, the fire was going, so we heated up some more sausage for breakfast. Played some foot bocce (a variant that keeps the mud off the hands), drank coffee. Around 8:00 am we all decided to go back to Jade Cove. I felt much stronger than the night before, so away we went, same multiple break routine, no problems.

Saturday the 16th
Never did get any poison oak, and I consider that pretty lucky. I did get the big slam of chemo on Tuesday, and a spinal tap with chemo in the spine on Wed. I am starting to feel the chemo effects, a little less energy, a little more nauseous. I asked yesterday at the doc’s, how bad should I be feeling, and they said pretty bad, but you’ll feel worse next week. So there is that to look forward to.

I went golfing last night, played 11 holes. It was ugly and glorious all at once. We were going to go Wed. night, then Thurs. night, but it was really windy Wed. and the Red Sox were playing the NY Yankers Thursday. When I went in for my chemo shot on Friday am, I told them to shoot me in the left arm. I’d been avoiding that spot in anticipation of golfing, but realized that was keeping us from golfing. The karma of pain must be the fulcrum for the yin-yang of the swing plane. Sure enough, 5:30 I hit my tee shot on #1 at Morro Bay, a weak fade 270 yards, but in the fairway. It got uglier from there. I triple bogeyed the first five holes, and Mike B. said ‘This leukemia is great, I might kick your ass!’

We hooked up with the famous golfing Leary brothers on #6, and it all changed. I outdrove everyone, hit sand wedge to the green and 2-putted for par. Mike was a little nervous. I had to rethink the whole swing, it couldn’t be the athletic aggressive swing of the past. I decided to make it into the circle of life swing, a little Simba swing, hakunamatatta if you will. Just let the ball get in the way. Sure there were some more duffs, a few trees, some barkies, but I parred a couple more holes, had some good swings, and all in all consider it a good start. Mike did beat me for the first time ever, but that’s OK, his run is over. I am MacArthur, and Morro Bay is the Philippines!

I got the PC back up and running with a new drive, and I will have to do some soldering to try to recover the data from the old hard drive. The other old HD did die, the one that was making all the noise. Amazingly that drive booted up and ran until I had the new drive configured, and then it gasped and expired. I realized a lot of pictures are on the laptop, so I didn’t’ lose too much - pride, esteem, a hard drive, an entire catalog of photos I will have to redo. I will try to make up some Eyebrow Lowbrow while I am rebuilding the photo catalog.